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Title Protest, voting and political change : the effects of NGOs on politics in developing democracies
Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7b19p9j1
Author Boulding, Carew Elizabeth
Publication Date 2007
Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Protest, Voting and Political Change:
The Effects of NGOs on Politics in Developing Democracies
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in
Political Science
by
Carew Elizabeth Boulding
Committee in charge:
Professor Paul W. Drake, Chair Professor Scott W. Desposato Professor Richard E. Feinberg Professor Clark C. Gibson Professor Peter A. Gourevitch Professor Stephan M. Haggard
2007 Copyright
Carew Elizabeth Boulding, 2007
All rights reserved. The dissertation of Carew Elizabeth Boulding is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm:
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______Chair
University of California, San Diego
2007
iii DEDICATION
To my daughter, Sevilla, for helping me find balance, and focus, and more joy than I knew was possible.
And to Aaron, my husband, for everything.
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS
Signature Page…………………………………………………………… iii
Dedication…………………………………………………………. ……. iv
Table of Contents………………………………………………………… v
Abbreviations……………………………………………………………. vi
List of Figures…………………………………………………………… x
List of Tables……………………………………………………………. xi
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………… xii
Vita………………………………………………………………………. xiv
Abstract………………………………………………………………….. xv
Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………….. 1
Chapter 2: The Political Effects of Nongovernmental Organizations….. 15
Chapter 3: NGOs, Voter Turnout, and Political Protest ………………… 47
Chapter 4 : The Role of NGOs in Shaping Protest Movements : Comparative Evidence from the Labo rand Indigenous Movements in Bolivia…………………………………………………………………….. 77
Chapter 5 : NGOs, Elections and Political Change………………………. 109
Chapter 6 : NGOs and Political Change : Case Studies of Large and Small Municipalities………………………………………………………. 130
Chapter 7 : Conclusion……………………………………………………. 168
Appendices……………………………………………………………….. 179
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………… 184
v ABBREVIATIONS
AIPE Asociación de Instituciones de Promoción y Educación (Association of Institutions for Development and Education), an NGO based in La Paz.
ADN Acción Democrática Nacional (National Democratic Action), the centerright political party formerly led by General Hugo Suárez Banzer.
APCOB Apoyo Para el CampesinoIndígena del Oriente Boliviano (Support for PeasantIndigenous People of Eastern Bolivia), a small NGO based in Santa Cruz.
APG Asamblea del Pueblo Guaraní (Association of Guaraní People).
CEADES Colectivo de Estudios Aplicados y Desarrollo Social (Collective for Applied Studies and Social Development), an NGO based in Santa Cruz.
CEASE Centro de Estudios Para La Accion Socio Economica (Center for Studies of SocioEconomic Action), an NGO based in Santa Cruz.
CEDETI Centro de Tecnologias Intermedias (Center for Intermediate Technologies), a Bolivian NGO.
CESACRUZ Centro de Salud Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz Health Center), a health care NGO.
CIDAC Centro de Investigación Diseño y Comercialización de la Artesania Cruceño (Center of Research, Design, and marketing of the Santa Cruz Artisanry), an NGO based in Santa Cruz working on handicraft marketing.
CIDESA Centro Integral de Desarrollo Social Agropecuario (Integrated Center for Social and Agricultural Development).
CIDOB Confederación Indígena del Oriente de Bolivia (Indigenous Federation of Eastern Bolivia), the Santa Cruz based national federation for indigenous people.
vi CIPCA Centro de Investigacion y Promocion del Campesinado (Center for Investigation and Promotion of Campesinos), a large Bolivian NGO that focuses on indigenous issues.
CNE Corte Nacional Electoral (National Electoral Court), the Bolivian government agency that governs elections.
CNTCB Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (National Federation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia), a precurser organization to the CSUTCB.
COB Central Obrero Boliviano (Bolivian Labor Center), the oldest and most important labor organization in Bolivia.
COOPI Cooperazione Internazionale (International Cooperation), an Italianbased international NGO.
CRS Catholic Relief Services, a U.S. based international NGO.
CSUTCB Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (United Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia), an indigenous social movement.
FCI Family Care International, a U.S. based maternal health NGO.
FODEI Fomento al Desarrolo Infantil (Infant Development Promotion), a Bolivian health care NGO.
FONDECO Fondo de Desarrollo Comunal (Fund for Common Development), a Bolivian development NGO.
FSE Fondo Social de Emergéncia (Social Emergency Fund), established to counter the poverty caused by structural adjustment.
FUNBODEM Fundación Boliviana para el Desarrollo de la Mujer (Bolivian Development Foundation for Women).
FUAMU Fundación Amigos del Museo de Historia Natural Noel Kempff Mercado (Foundation of Friends of the Natural History Museum Noel Kempff Mercado), a Bolivian NGO.
INASET Instituto de Asistencia Social Economica y Tecnologica (Instiute for Social, Economic and Technical Assistance), a
vii Bolivian NGO.
INE Instituto Nacional de Estatísticas (National Statistics Institute), a Bolivian government agency.
KNH Kindernothilfe, a Germanbased international NGO.
MAS Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Toward Socialism), a Leftist Bolivian political party, headed by Evo Morales.
MBL Movimiento Bolivia Libre (Free Bolivia Movement), a leftist Bolivian political party.
MIR Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionario (Leftist Revolutionary Movement), leftist political party in Bolivia.
MME Medicus Mundi España, Delegacion Bolivia (World Doctors Spain, Bolivian Delegation), a Spanish international NGO.
MNR Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement), the largest and oldest political party in Bolivia and the party that led the 1952 revolution.
NFR Nueva Fuerza Democratica (New Republican Force), center right Bolivian political party.
NGO Nongovernmental Organization.
OFPROBOL Oficina de Proyectos Para Bolivia (Office of Projects for Bolivia).
OTB Organizaciones Territoriales de Base (territorial grassroots organizations), grassroots organizations defined by the LPP.
LPP Ley de Partícipacion Popular (Law of Popular Participation).
PCI Project Concern International, a U.S.based international NGO.
PNUD Programa de la Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (United Nations Development Program)
PROCESO Proceso Servicios Educativos (Process Educational Services), a Bolivian NGO.
viii UCS Unidad Civica Solidaridad (Civic Solidarity Union), a neoliberal political party in Bolivia.
VIPFE Viceministerio de Inversión Pública y Financiamiento Externo (Viceministry of Public Finance and Foreign Investment), a Bolivian government agency.
VMIB Vision Mundial International Bolivia (World Vision International Bolivia), the Bolivian branch of the large international NGO World Vision.
ix LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.1 Growth of NGOs in Bolivia 19312004…………… …….. 4
Figure 5.1 Predicted Change in Incumbent Party’s Vote Share………. 134
x LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1 Key Variables in the Analysis of the Political Effects of NGOs…………………………………………… 29
Table 2.2 Number of NGO Projects in Bolivia by Target Group……. 31
Table 2.3 Number of NGOs in Bolivia by Sector and Origin……….. 34
Table 2.4 Number of NGOs in Bolivia by Decade and Origin………. 41
Table 3.1 OLS: Effects of Change in NGOs on Change in Voter Turnout……………………………………………… 69
Table 3.2 OLS: Effects of Change in NGOs on Change in Protest……………………………………………………… 71
Table 3.3 OLS: Effects of Change in INGOs on Change in Protest……………………………………………………… 74
Table 4.1 Resource Availability and NGO Type……………………. 84
Table 5.1 OLS: Change in NGOs on Change in Incumbent Party Vote Share………………………………………….. 124
Table 5.2 OLS: Change in International NGOs on Raw Votes For Incumbent Party………………………………………. 128
Table 6.1 NGOs in Urubichá………………………………………… 146
Table 6.2 NGOs in Gutiérrez………………………………………… 155
Table 6.3 NGOs in Saavedra…………………………………………. 161
Table 6.4 NGOs in Montero…………………………………………. 164
Table 7.1 Key Variables in the Analysis of the Political Effects of NGOs…………………………………………… 175
xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This dissertation was written with the support of a dissertation year fellowship from the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) during the academic year 20062007. My first summer of field research in 2004 was funded by a Research Travel Grant from the Center for Iberian and Latin American
Studies (CILAS) at UCSD. My return trip in 2007 was funded by a research grant as part of the IGCC fellowship.
This project has benefited from comments and support from many of the faculty at UCSD. My biggest debt is to Paul Drake, my dissertation advisor. His perfect balance of criticism and encouragement has kept me afloat throughout the years of this project. I am also very grateful to Clark Gibson, Steph Haggard, Peter
Gourevitch, Scott Desposato and Richard Feinberg for serving on my committee and providing valuable feedback at many stages of this project. Working with Clark
Gibson as a coauthor has been an education in itself, and he deserves special thanks. I also benefited from coursework and comments from David Lake, Miles Kahler, Craig
McIntosh, Karen Ferree, Kristian Gleditsch, Phil Roeder, Peter Smith, and Gary Cox.
I was very fortunate to go through graduate school with a wonderful group of graduate students and friends. I am particularly thankful for the friendships of Susan
Hyde, my office mate, coauthor and dear friend, without whom I would not have made it this far; Melody Ellis Valdini, for lifesaving walks and talks, Emily Beaulieu, who helps keep me sane, and David Cunningham and Kathleen Gallagher
xii Cunningham, for many coffee breaks and pep talks. My colleagues Henry Kim,
Alejandra RiosCazares, Barak Hoffman, and Scott Bailey also deserve thanks for their friendship, advice, and criticism.
My friend and mentor, Irfan Nooruddin, deserves special thanks for reading multiple drafts of this project, providing insightful comments, reminding me why I love the work I am doing, and helping me find my footing in this career.
For invaluable help with fieldwork in Bolivia, and for her keen insights into
Bolivian politics, I am very grateful to Nancy Postero. Having to explain my project to an anthropologist has kept me honest, and kept me on my toes. I am thankful for the openness and generosity with which scholars in Bolivia shared their insights with me, in particular conversations with George Gray Molina, Ramiro Molina, Tom Kruse, and Xavier Álbo stand out. Many thanks also to my interview subjects in NGOs and government.
Several other people have provided valuable feedback on this project. David S.
Brown of the University of Colorado has been a source of inspiration to me, and a helpful critic of several drafts of this project. Jeffrey Freiden, as discussant on an
APSA panel, gave helpful comments on Chapter 5.
Finally, I would not have made it through the last six years without the support of my friends and family outside of academia most importantly, my husband Aaron, for always believing in me and supporting me, and helping me keep perspective. Also my dear aunt Pam and my best friend Melinda deserve more thanks than I can express
xiii for being there through every crisis. And the best little sister in the whole world,
Frances, deserves special thanks as my traveling companion.
Chapter 5 has been submitted for publication in Comparative Political Studies as a coauthored article with Professor Clark Gibson. The dissertation author is the first author. The comments from three anonymous reviewers were very helpful.
All errors and omissions are of course my own.
xiv VITA
1999 B.A., English, University of Washington
1999 B.A., Political Science, University of Washington
2003 M.A., Political Science, University of California, San Diego
2007 Ph.D., Political Science, University of California, San Diego
xv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
Protest, Voting and Political Change:
The Effects of NGOs on Politics in Developing Democracies
by
Carew Elizabeth Boulding
Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science
University of California, San Diego, 2007
Professor Paul W. Drake, Chair
This dissertation examines the political effects of NGOs in developing democracies. There is a large and contradictory literature on whether, how, and why
NGOs affect politics. Some argue that NGOs are an essential component of a strong civil society necessary for democratic consolidation. Others argue that NGOs are co opted by the existing hierarchy of political elites, and politicians claim credit for the services they provide, damaging democratic accountability.
xvi I argue that NGOs have systematic effects on politics in two realms: participation and voting behavior. First, I agree with the conventional wisdom that
NGOs tend to boost participation of all kinds. However, I argue that – particularly in weakly democratic settings – NGOs are likely to encourage unconventional means of participation such as demonstrations and protest in addition to more conventional forms such as voting. This is a strong challenge to the common assumption in the literature that NGOs are the bulwark of moderate civil society.
Second, I argue that the effects of NGOs on voting behavior are conditional on the size of the jurisdiction in question. Existing work predicts starkly contradictory political effects: Some claim NGOs should help incumbents by providing services for which politicians can claim credit, while others claim they should hurt incumbents by facilitating opposition. I argue that both these effects are possible, but in different contexts. In areas with very small populations, the associational effects of NGOs (their ability to bring people together, air common grievances, and build trust to help solve collective action problems) are much stronger, making it more likely that NGO activity will strengthen opposition politics. In larger population areas, however, the effects of increases in association are relatively much smaller. And, in the more impersonal setting of larger cities, creditclaiming for NGO services is easier. Thus,
NGOs in larger cities are likely to help incumbents, rather than help the opposition.
I test my argument and competing hypotheses from the literature using a new approach: an analysis of an original subnational dataset comparing municipalities in
xvii Bolivia. The dataset includes measures of NGO activity, election returns, and protest, as well as a number of controls, for two time periods, 1999 and 2004.
xviii Chapter 1
Introduction
In October of 2003, columns of colorfully dressed protesters marched down the winding road into the capital city of Bolivia. Indigenous groups, labor groups, miners, retired workers, and neighborhood associations converged on the central government plaza to demand the resignation of President Sanchez de Lozada. These marches, which came on the heels of weeks of growing tensions between the state and popular sectors, became increasingly violent. In a series of confrontations over several weeks, nearly a 100 people were killed in clashes between protesters and the armed forces, and finally the president was forced to flee the country (APDHB et al. 2004 and Álvaro et al. 2004).
The vice president, Carlos Mesa Gilbert, took over the presidency with a promise that he would not continue to use force against the protesters. However, after several months of continuing protests and roadblocks, he declared the country
“ungovernable” and tried unsuccessfully to resign. In June of 2005, with the country paralyzed by continuing strikes and roadblocks, Congress accepted Mesa’s resignation, sparking a constitutional crisis over succession, which ended with hurried new presidential elections. In December of 2005, Evo Morales, the charismatic former head of the cocagrowers union and an important leader in the popular uprisings, was elected as the first indigenous president in Bolivia’s history.
1 2
By all accounts, NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) played a key role in mobilizing people for these protests, both directly and indirectly. Most of the key social groups involved in the demonstrations – indigenous groups, labor unions, miners, student groups, and retired workers – have a history of strong links to NGOs, who for several decades have brought significant new resources to underprivileged communities and groups in Bolivia. More directly, a radio station run by a prominent women’s NGO in the adjoining city of El Alto was instrumental in organizing the protests by broadcasting plans to coordinate the days marches and demonstrations.
The NGOs and social movements involved also have strong ties to the new political party of Evo Morales, the MAS.
For the proponents of NGOs, this was seen as a major victory for democracy and representation of traditionally excluded groups in Bolivia. Following unprecedented levels of NGO activity in Bolivia, and growing links between NGOs and social movements, the indigenous majority in Bolivia finally took the presidency and a majority in Congress. However, NGO critics see the same series of events as evidence of the potentially destabilizing effects of NGOs and civil society mobilization. The protests and demonstrations effectively brought the country to the brink of crisis, brought down several presidencies, and pushed a new brand of populist leader to the head of state.
These events and debates in Bolivia are representative of larger issues across the developing world. As the number of democratic countries in the developing world has grown, so to have uncertainties about how democracy works in countries with 3 weak governments, weak economies, and a history of conflict between state and society. These questions of accountability and governance have become increasingly central for developing countries, foreign aid donors and academics. NGOs increasingly find themselves at the center of these debates. NGOs first gained attention as important new actors involved in the global push for democracy and development in the 1980s. Not only were NGOs local, responsive groups tackling the big issues facing their countries, they were seen as less corrupt, and more efficient than their governmental counterparts. However the current literature is much more divided between those who see NGOs as essentially good for democracy, and those who are more skeptical.
Those who see NGOs as essentially good for democracy draw their arguments from the classic work on social capital and civil society, following work by Almond and Verba (1965) and later Putnam (1993). In this view, NGOs are credited with increasing participation by mobilizing and empowering people to engage in politics.
They are also credited with increasing accountability by making people more aware of their role as citizens in a democracy, and empowering them to work for political change. And they are said to improve representation by bringing previously underrepresented groups into the political process. At the most extreme, arguments have been made that NGOs, and by extension a strong civil society, are an essential precondition for democracy to survive and flourish in poor countries.
However, some scholars are increasingly skeptical of the role of these organizations for several reasons. First, Some argue that NGOs can be easily coopted 4 by elites and by international donors. These concerns were first raised by scholars looking at NGOs and civil society in Africa, where the relationship between NGOs and foreign donors is very strong. A famous study of NGOs in Kenya, for example, finds that many people leading NGOs are elites who formerly worked in government, not new voices at all (Ndegwa 1996). Second, some scholars question whether having nongovernmental organizations providing essential services and public goods is actually good for the democratic contract – maybe these organizations were severing an important link between state and society and covering up government failures. And finally, some are fearful that the new mobilization of previously underrepresented groups can be a challenge to the stability of new regimes.
All agree there are more of these organizations today than ever before. The growth of NGOs over the last generation has been exponential. While no definitive count is possible, a very safe estimate places the number worldwide in the hundreds of thousands (Salamon and Anheier 1997). New streams of revenue explain a great deal of this dramatic increase.1 Bilateral and multilateral donors believe that NGOs can deliver different services than governments and donors, deliver them more efficiently, and/or deliver them to segments of the populations that the state cannot reach easily.
Using NGOs is also thought to reduce the corruption that can be found in official state agencies. The “New Policy Agenda” of the 1990s was exemplary of this approach, and billions of dollars have flowed from the industrialized democracies to NGOs in
1 (Ungpakorn 2004) offers 5 reasons for the rapid increase of NGOs: expansion of NGOs from the west, either directly or financing local NGOS; increasing use of NGOs by developing country governments in response to neoliberal attacks on state provision of services; these governments recognized the beneficial effects of using NGOs for service provision; fragmentation of left wing movements; failure of trade unions and parties to articulate social problems (p. 1) 5
developing countries: the World Bank provided $1.3 billion dollars to NGOs and
communitybased organizations from 19851997 (Gibbs, Fumo, and Kuby 1999); the
Economist estimates that twothirds of European Union relief aid already flowed
through NGOs by 1994 (Brown, Desposato, and Brown forthcoming).
700
600 Bolivian NGOs
500 International NGOs
Total 400
300
200
100
0 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020
Figure 1.1 Growth in NGOs in Bolivia 1931-2004 (Source: VIPFE 2006)
Figure 1.1 shows the numbers of NGOs working in Bolivia have increased
exponentially since the 1930s when only a handful of organizations were working.
Today there are over 600. Also, it is clear that NGOs are growing in numbers in recent
years – this trend is continuing. These figures are from Bolivia, but a similar pattern is
evident in most of the developing world. 6
This dissertation examines the political effects of NGOs in developing democracies, focusing on evidence from Bolivia. I explore the systematic effects of
NGOs on politics in two realms: participation and voting behavior. Despite the high stakes for the developing world, and the heated debate over the role of NGOs in democracy and development, there is little systematic work evaluating the political impact of NGOs in developing democracies. Using new local level data from Bolivia,
I test a number of arguments about the role that NGOs have in influencing political participation and promoting political change.
First, I agree with the conventional wisdom that NGOs in the developing world tend to boost participation of all kinds. Most NGOs are engaged in activities that build social capital, particularly for underserved or previously excluded groups of citizens.2
However, I argue that – particularly in weakly democratic settings – NGOs are likely to encourage unconventional means of participation such as demonstrations and protest in addition to more conventional forms such as voting. This is a strong challenge to the common assumption in the literature that NGOs are the bulwark of moderate civil society.
Second, I argue that the effects of NGOs on voting behavior are conditional on the size of the jurisdiction in question; scale matters. Existing work predicts starkly contradictory political effects, and to date these divergent claims have not been reconciled. Some claim NGOs should help incumbents by providing services for
2 There are obvious exceptions to this generalization. Notably, some NGOs are merely “paper organizations” that seek international funding, but accomplish very little. My research in Bolivia indicates that this is a small minority of the organizations working in Bolivia. The vast majority are engaged in activities that could conceivably build social capital, including conducting workshops, literacy programs, health care programs, and other participatory development projects, although certainly some are more effective than others. 7 which politicians can claim credit, while others claim they should hurt incumbents by facilitating opposition. I argue that both these effects are possible, but in different contexts. In areas with very small populations, the associational effects of NGOs (their ability to bring people together, air common grievances, and build trust to help solve collective action problems) are much stronger, making it much more likely that NGO activity in small jurisdictions will strengthen opposition politics. In larger population areas, however, the effects of increases in association are relatively much smaller.
And, in the more impersonal setting of larger cities, creditclaiming for NGO services is easier. Thus, NGOs in larger cities are likely to help incumbents, rather than help the opposition.
I test my arguments and competing hypotheses from the literature using a new approach: an analysis of an original subnational dataset comparing municipalities in
Bolivia. I compiled the data from a variety of sources, including a government registry of NGOs working in Bolivia, the website for the Bolivian Electoral Court (CNE 2006 and 1999), the National Statistics Institute of Bolivia, a household census (INE 2006), and wire news reports of protests and demonstrations. To code the protest data, I read through all wire stories including the key term Bolivia for two years, and coded reports of protest by size, type, duration, location and number of participants.
Aggregating the data to the municipal level involved quite a lot of detective work, as the names for each municipality vary considerably from one source to another. The final dataset includes measures of NGO activity, election returns, and protest, as well as a number of controls, for two time periods, 1999 and 2004. 8
The new local level data for this project is an exciting advance. This project combines the advantages of largen statistical analysis with the advantage of in depth analysis of a single country’s experience with NGOs. Using subnational data also allows for a great deal more variation on the issues that are central to this analysis than crossnational data would allow, and holds constant many important countrylevel factors. Additionally, most of the causal mechanisms hypothesized between NGOs and political outcomes occur at very local levels, so it is ideal to be able to test them at that level of analysis.
This project was also shaped by my time in Bolivia. I draw on contacts, impressions, and experiences from half a year of living and working in La Paz and traveling in Bolivia in 2001. Once this project was underway, I spent a month during the summer of 2004 in Bolivia, conducting interviews with NGO leaders, academics, and foreign aid workers, and tracking down election data and data on NGOs. In
January of 2007 I returned to conduct interviews in La Paz and Santa Cruz.
A Word on Definitions
The definitional issues at stake in the study of nongovernmental organizations are far from trivial. It might seem trite to point out that even the name “non governmental organization” refers only to what these organizations are not. However, clarifying the flip side – what exactly NGOs are – is no easy task. First of all, the range and variety of organizations that fall under the category of NGOs is enormous.
In one of the first substantial books to theoretically analyze the role of NGOs and 9 foreign aid in development, Terje Tvedt wrote that analytical efforts have been
“hampered by the fact that there is no generally accepted transnational or tranhistorical definition of what is an ‘NGO’, ‘nonprofit’ or ‘voluntary organization’ (1998, 11). As
Tvedt points out, this problem is compounded by the wide range of organizations that fall into the category of NGOs and the everchanging nature of relations between these organizations, states and markets. Tvedt captures this confusion well:
Some organizations are, or have become, statedirected, while others have been directly established by governments to serve state interests. In some countries there is growing competition not only among the NGOs themselves but also between ‘forprofit’ firms and traditional ‘nonprofit’ NGOs for development or emergency contracts with governments. NGOs develop into forprofit firms and forprofit firms establish a ‘voluntary’ arm in order to acquire profitable contracts (1998, 11).
To add to this definitional quagmire, there are also complicated and overlapping taxonomies of types of NGOS, starting with the division between
“northern” NGOs (those based in a single developed country, but working in the developing world), “southern” NGOs (also called “indigenous NGOs” or “thirdworld
NGOs,” and usually characterized as NGOs that are based exclusively in one developing country, though this distinction can be blurred by large amounts of
“northern” money and influence). Among southern NGOs, the distinctions become even more complex, trying to capture differences between grassroots organizations
(GROs), grassroots support organizations (GRSOs), GRO networks and GRSO networks (Fisher 1998, 4). The terms voluntary organization, associational 10 organization, communitybased organization, civilsociety organization and charitable organization are also all in use to refer to largely the same actors (Tvedt 1998, 12).
This dissertation will focus primarily on development NGOs – organizations which are “nominally private, nonprofit agencies that act as intermediaries between international financial donors and local residents and whose function is to implement projects favoring the socalled popular sectors…or to provide services to grassroots constituencies” (Gill 2002, 10; Landon 1987). These are the types of organizations that receive the majority of foreign aid funding targeted toward NGOs and civil society, and they make up the vast majority of NGOs in Bolivia.
Operationally, this project relies on the definition from the Bolivia government
NGO registry. Most of the empirical work in this project uses data collected from this registry and, by default, the operational definition of what counts as an “NGO” here is largely limited by the types of organizations that register with the government. NGOs of all types are required by law to register with the Bolivian government and provide information on the geographic area in which they work, the target population they benefit, the projects they implement, and their sources of funding (VIPFE 2006). 11
Chapter Outline
The dissertation provides theoretically grounded empirical tests of the political effects of NGOs in two realms: political participation and voting behavior. For each part, I use both quantitative and qualitative analyses.
Chapter 2 lays out a framework for analyzing the political effects of NGOs, and makes the case for using Bolivia as the primary testing ground for exploring these relationships. First, I review the literature on NGOs and civil society, focusing on the expectations for how NGOs might affect democracy. Second, I detail a framework for understanding the impact of NGOs, focusing on variables at three levels: 1) characteristics of the community targeted NGOs, 2) features of the NGOs themselves, and 3) the broader political context of the state. And third, since the following analysis is grounded in the Bolivian experience, I give an overview of the history of NGO involvement in Bolivia.
Chapters 3 and 4 explores the link between NGO activity and political participation in Bolivia, first with quantitative tools, and then with qualitative analysis, respectively. Chapter 3 presents the findings from a largen subnational statistical analysis of all the municipalities in Bolivia. I compare changes in the number of
NGOs with changes in both levels of voter turnout and incidences of protest, finding a strong relationship between increases in NGOs and increases in protest, but only a weak link between NGOs and voter turnout.
Chapter 4 examines the link between NGOs and protest movements more closely, by comparing the role of NGOs in the development of three very different 12 social movements in Bolivia: the highland indigenous movement, the lowland indigenous movement, and the labor movement. This chapter fleshes out the causal mechanisms driving the link between NGOs and protest, and makes the case that
NGOs are most likely to facilitate protest under two conditions: 1) when the NGO projects include a focus on community development, capacity building, or participatory governance programs, and 2) when they provide a significant influx of previously unavailable resources.
In the case of the lowland indigenous movement, NGOs brought new resources to communities that were previously very isolated. The NGOs that worked most closely with these indigenous communities also tended to focus on encouraging participation and building community capacity, with the goal of engaging indigenous communities into politics. In this case, NGOs played a clear causal role in facilitating mobilization. The highland indigenous groups had slightly higher organizational resources before NGO involvement, and the types of NGOs that targeted highland altiplano communities were more mixed between the more “political” capacity building NGOs and ones that focused on service provision, but NGOs played a role in facilitating mobilization and participation. In the third case, the relationship between
NGOs and mobilization of the labor movement is less direct. Many NGOs have strong connections to labor in Bolivia, but the movement was well organized and had access to resources before the influx of NGOs. Also, many NGOs working with labor focused more on issues such as small business development than on promoting political 13 engagement. In this case, NGOs play a support role, but their importance as a central causal factor in the mobilization of new forms of political participation is weaker.
Chapters 5 and 6 turn to the question of political change, focusing on whether
NGOs tend to help electoral challengers or tend to support the status quo in local elections. Chapter 5 uses quantitative data from the municipal level to test the relationship between changes in the number of NGOs in an area and changes in vote share for the incumbent. This chapter presents evidence that NGOs can have markedly different effects contingent on the size of the community in which they work.
Specifically, in very small communities (with populations of less than 10,000 people) there is a strong connection between increases in NGOs and electoral losses for the incumbent political party. However, in larger communities, the relationship is opposite and weaker: increases in NGOs tend to help incumbent political parties, but not by a large margin.
Chapter 6 presents case studies of NGOs in four differently sized municipalities to further explore the hypothesis that scale is a key factor in determining the political effects of NGOs. Although the types of NGOs working in both the large and small municipalities are very similar, the effects that they have on mobilizing people for electoral change appear to be very different. This chapter also gives important context for understanding the day to day activities of NGOs in different communities in Bolivia, giving a detailed profile of the NGO scene in each of four municipalities. 14
Taken together, these chapters present a picture of NGOs as highly political entities. Despite being “nongovernmental” they have systematic and substantial effects on the local political systems in which they operate. More interestingly, the effects that they have – whether they tend to encourage participation through voting or street protests, whether they tend be a force for change, or a force for the status quo – depend critically on the context in which they are working, the activities they are involved in, and the nature of the communities they are targeting. Chapter 2
The Political Effects of NGOs in Developing Democracies
How do nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) influence politics? Do they help strengthen democracy by facilitating the development of strong civil society?
How do NGOs change the ways in which people engage with politics, and more importantly, how do they affect the ways in which tensions between state and society are expressed? This chapter develops a theoretical framework for beginning to tackle these questions.
I argue that there are two types of political effects that are most essential to understanding the larger issue of whether NGOs tend to help democracy or hinder it in weakly or developing democratic settings. The first is political participation. The second is electoral support for political change. Although the universe of ways in which NGOs might affect politics certainly extend beyond these two arenas, they lie at the core of the debate over the benefits of NGOs for democracy.
The classic arguments that NGOs help strengthen democracy rest on the idea that they change how people participate in politics, and that this change opens up possibilities for greater accountability and political change. By engaging new, often previously excluded, voices into the political process, NGOs boost participation and force the state to focus attention on the poor and excluded. These newly empowered and mobilized citizens also learn the rules of electoral accountability, and use their new political clout to vote unresponsive politicians and parties out of office.
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Underlying this logic is the assumption that NGOs have a net effect of increasing political participation and that this will have a positive effect on democracy.
A number of interesting theoretical and empirical questions underpin this debate. Do NGOs increase participation? What kind of participation? Do they boost voting turnout or more contentious participation such as protests, demonstrations or strikes? And do NGOs affect electoral support for the status quo? Do political challengers or political incumbents tend to benefit from NGO activity? Most importantly, under what conditions do NGOs affect patterns of participation and/or election outcomes.
I argue that variables at three different levels determine how an NGO is likely to affect politics: It is important to understand 1) the nature of the community being targeted by NGOs, 2) the nature of the NGOs themselves, 3) and the larger political backdrop of the state. There is considerable variation across the developing world (and within Bolivia) on all three counts. In order to claim any generalities about how NGOs affect politics, it is essential to have a clear understanding of the community they are working in, the type of organization and its activities, and the larger political context.
Roadmap
This chapter is organized as follows. First, I look at the rapidly growing literature on the political effects of NGOs in order to clarify existing claims and expectations about how NGOs influence politics in developing democracies. This literature, while rich and fascinating, is characterized by multiple competing claims 17 and very little systematic hypothesis testing. Second, I propose a framework for understanding the political effects of NGOs. Third, I discuss the selection of Bolivia as the primary testing ground for this project and give a brief overview of the NGO
“scene” in Bolivia to set the stage for the empirical chapters that follow.
Are NGOs Good for Democracy?
Early scholarship addressing the increasingly important role of NGOs tended to be descriptive. Observers generally sought to explore NGO structures, goals, and outputs, mostly with an eye towards explaining intended or unintended policy outcomes (e.g. Abers 1996; Fox 1994; Lehman 1990); for a review see (Brown,
Brown and Desposato 2002). Analysts producing this work often had worked for
NGOs, or were academics with connections to NGOs or their funding agencies
(Brown, Brown and Desposato 2002; Carroll 1992; Clarke 1998; Hulme and Edwards
1997). This work established the baselines for what NGOs sought to accomplish and explored the reasons for their success or failures. And while such studies at least implicitly addressed the political aspects of NGOs, they did not systematically investigate such issues (Brown, Brown and Desposato 2002; Devine 2006; Keck
1998).
NGOs, by building direct relationships among citizens that are not mediated by the state, strengthen civil society. Civil society refers to the many associative organizations that create ties among members of a community. It is “an intermediate realm between state and family populated by organizations which are separate from 18 the state, enjoy autonomy in relation to the state and are formed voluntarily by members of the society to protect or extend their interests or values” (White 1994,
379). NGOs are one variety of organization in a larger system of associative relations among citizens. While advocacy groups certainly fall into the category of civil society, so too do recreational associations, sports leagues and community centers to name a few. The idea is that the more people interact in positive, reciprocal ways, the stronger the sense of community becomes and the easier it is to solve collective action problems and be involved in the political life of the country.
The argument that civil society is a necessary precondition for consolidated democracy was initially made by Robert Putnam (1993, 2000), following in the tradition of work by Almond and Verba (1965) who took political and civic culture as a serious variable in determining the success and stability of democracies. Putnam’s work on what he calls “social capital” makes the case that the strength of a civic community, defined by the types of associative relations among citizens, either facilitates or hinders coordinated action. Where high levels of social capital exist, coordination is made easier by trust and norms of reciprocity, greatly improving the performance and efficiency of representative institutions.
Scholars working on the problems of democratic consolidation have also emphasized the importance of civil society, both as an essential component of a mobilized opposition to authoritarian rule, and as a player in the construction of new democracies (for example: O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986, Linz and Stepan 1996, and
Diamond 1999). Civil society in this context plays a crucial role in keeping 19 government abuses in check by acting as vocal and organized critics and watchdogs over government action.
Donors and NGO advocates claim that NGOs promote civil society through a variety of ways. First, just by virtue of the vast proliferation of NGOs in the last two decades, some organizational pluralism has been gained. That is, the “strength of civil society is roughly related to the sheer number of functioning intermediary organizations between the citizen and the state” (Fischer 1998,13). Since the number of such organizations has skyrocketed, some take this as evidence of strengthening civil society, although this is an admittedly simplistic measurement of the strength of civil society.
Second, through development of microenterprise projects, NGOs that do this kind of work are encouraging the creation of vested interests among the poor. By giving the poor a stake in economic advancement, some argue that they will come to rely on and trust in local government as a tool for positive change. NGOs of this type can also play a role in strengthening ties between various other groups in society, including small business (through microenterprise programs), and other outreach projects (Fischer 1998,16).
Third, some NGOs perform a critical role in lobbying for political rights and civil liberties, often bringing such issues to the national debate. In this role, NGOs serve as a source of critical information for people to understand and seek to effect their government. This function frequently overlaps with political organizing, including campaigns to encourage political participation. Basically, “NGOs strengthen 20 civil society…by focusing on bottomup democratization” (Fischer 1998:15). That is, by seeking to educate people politically and encourage involvement in the political system.
NGOs and Political Change
More recent scholarship has begun to focus directly on the links between politics and NGOs, producing a fertile array of theories designed to explain how such organizations fit into the political arena (Brown, Desposato, and Brown 2005, forthcoming; Brown, Brown, and Desposato 2002, forthcoming; Mercer 2002). I focus on two arguments that I believe define much of the debate: the “challenge” argument, in which NGOs challenge, or are supposed to challenge, the prevailing political order and the “status quo” argument, in which NGOs knowingly or unknowingly support the extant political order. I review the theories that support these two arguments below.
Depicting NGOs as challengers to entrenched authority dates back to the 1970s as nonstate groups in Latin America, inspired by liberation theology, worked to mobilize the poor and disenfranchised (Nylen 1997). But the theoretical underpinnings used by scholars for this view reach back much further. Most of these studies have linked NGOs’ political consequences to associational activity (here I follow the useful review of Brown, Desposato, and Brown (forthcoming)). From de
Tocqueville to Putnam, analysts have argued that associations provide horizontal linkages and produce social capital that, in turn, may foster alternative political ideas and groups to keep incumbent governments in check (Putnam 1993; Putnam 2000; 21
Robinson 1993). Many scholars who identify the benefits of NGOs have directly borrowed the language of associations in their discussion of NGOs (Devine 2006;
Mercer 2002). NGOs promote community organization and mobilization (Bebbington et al. 1993; Fisher 1997; Korten 1990); they legitimize and strengthen civil society
(Bratton 1989; Clarke 1998; Garrison 2000; Lambrou 1997; World Bank 2000); they generate more pluralism and political participation (Fisher 1997; Fowler 1991;
Silliman and Noble 1998); they offer a base for civil resistance to oppressive political systems (Fisher 1997; Loveman 1991); and they can even bring down authoritarian regimes (Clarke 1998)3. NGOs contribute to democracy by helping to create a
“vibrant and autonomous civil society” that can challenge despotic government
(Mercer 2002, 7) see also (Clark 1991; Diamond 1994).
There is another equally extensive literature that doubts NGOs’ ability to challenge political authority. Scholars using what I call “status quo” arguments have offered many mechanisms through which NGOs either support or at least do not confront political issues. NGOs can be captured by the state or statesupporting entrenched interests, which can undermine a previous commitment to their agenda of political change (Ndegwa 1996; Putnam 2000; Uvin 1998). Funds received from the state or international sources could chip away the more confrontational issues previously championed by an NGO, so as not to endanger their funding source (Brown et al. 2002; Smillie 1996). Those that deal with international partners, in particular, could become “neoliberal” and thus nonconfrontational (Devine 2006; Pearce 2000;
3 It is important to note that this study addresses the political effects of NGOs in democratic settings, not authoritarian ones. 22
Townsend & Gordon 2002). Or worse, increasing numbers of NGOs competing for international funds may increase uncertainty and insecurity for the organizations, leading to increasingly poor outcomes (Cooley & Ron 2002). When contracted by the state to deliver services, NGOs could be unwittingly following the strategic interests of the government (Gideon 1998; Mercer 2002). Rather than increasing pressures on governments for policy change, the growth in NGO numbers could lead to fractionalization of opposition (Hammami 1995).
Critiques of NGOs: Existing Literature
Although much of the work on NGOs has been characterized by its optimism, a few serious criticisms have emerged in the wake of the explosion in numbers of
NGOs and in funding available for them in the 1980s and 1990s. These can be roughly divided into two groups. The first has to do with the displacement of local agendas by international ones. This change arguably destroys one of the key advantages of NGOs, namely that they are closer to the needs of local citizens than donors. The second group of criticisms focuses on the sources of funding, arguing that competition over foreign funding can create a dependent, competitive environment that is damaging to civil society by eroding trust between NGOs at the local level. In both these scenarios,
NGOs would not be expected to increase political participation or accountability because they are seen essentially as agents of the elite, or as dysfunctional organizations competing for funding.
The first set of criticisms to emerge in the literature on NGOs and foreign aid 23 was aimed at raising concern over the impact that foreign donors had on vibrant local communities and community organizations. With huge inflows of foreign aid money, some local groups felt that they lost control over key decisions in the development process, increasingly having to pander to the evaluation and demands of foreign donors in order not to lose funding. These arguments focus on the displacement of local agendas by international ones, both through funding dependence and, increasingly, through international NGOs operating in the same arenas as local ones.
Dependency on external funds can be framed as a huge threat to the organizational sustainability of NGOs. Instead of working as a force for pluralization of civil society, aid to NGOs can have serious unanticipated negative consequences. In the case where an NGO is dependent for its very survival on foreign project aid, the question of ownership and autonomy becomes troubling. And more importantly, “this extreme dependency seriously undermines NGOs’ ability to advance political issues in the long term” as the goals and objectives of the local group “become blurred by that of its donors” (Ndegwa 1996, 24).
The second group of criticisms focuses on how competition over foreign funding has changed previously cooperative relationships between different NGOs, in some cases damaging the little “civil society” building that might have been occurring.
This second set of critiques comes the closest to seriously tackling the impact on democracy of funding NGOs with foreign aid dollars. For example, a compelling case has been made in the African context that the relationship between civil society and democracy has been dangerously oversimplified (Ndegwa 1996). Specifically, this 24 relationship has been oversimplified in two areas: 1) the notion that “generic civil society is uniformly progressive in challenging the African state and promoting democracy” and, 2) the overemphasis on interactions between civil society and the state to the exclusion of “grassroots empowerment” (1996, 3).
Foreign aid to NGOs may be responsible for undercutting strong civil society by injecting competition over funds into previously cooperative relationships among
NGOs working in related areas. The procedure of competitive grantgiving has been applauded for the standard market reasons, including increasing efficiency, reducing reliance on personal ties for directing funding and providing positive incentives for local NGOs to improve their performance. However, outside funding can, at times, seriously undermine cooperative relationships between local organizations as competition increases (Fischer 1998, 181), and this is particularly damaging when the increased funding is intended to have the opposite effect. Additionally, by choosing which community organizations to support, larger NGOs disbursing money to smaller organizations can effectively create their own clientelist networks at the expense of local cooperation further down the chain. This issue is a problem at both levels because it creates winners and losers in the process, and not necessarily based on efficiency or quality of the organizations.
Cooley and Ron (2002) use a political economy approach to clarify the incentives involved in the growing numbers of international NGOs and their increasingly competitive, marketlike behavior. They argue that growth in the NGO sector worldwide and the marketization of their activities (including practices such as 25 competitive contracting) has increased organizational insecurity for all organizations involved, creating negative incentives and dysfunctional outcomes. Because international NGOs compete with each other to raise money and secure contracts from donors and are often engaged for shortterm projects, adverse incentives are numerous.
Specifically, principalagent problems and problems of oversight can lead to negative outcomes. This runs directly counter to the claim put forth by Fischer (1998) that increasing numbers of NGOs suggests a positive “strengthening” of civil society.
In a recent book on the Ills of Aid, Reusse points to a similar problem, lambasting the blindness of foreign aid donors to the impact their funding can have on an otherwise vibrant NGO community. He credits foreign funding with sparking the creation of thousands of NGOs worldwide and argues that these groups should be considered products of the aid business, not local community organizations with all the positive attributes of such. He cites the example of Panama, claiming that “more than 200 southern NGOs were born in Panama practically overnight after the creation of a World Bank – supported national Social Fund” (Reusse 2002, 85). This startling example suggests that the incentives of NGOs have been dramatically affected by donor’s shift toward giving to NGOs in place of governments – perhaps to the point of damaging the qualities of NGOs that proponents advocate.
In these scenarios, the expectation that NGOs should help strengthen democracy by building a strong civil society, increasing democratic participation, and improving accountability is unrealistic. Instead, the opposite predictions might hold:
NGOs might weaken civil society through bitter battles over funding and, captured by 26 elites, might do more damage than good in the realm of accountability and promoting political change.
Existing Empirical Work
There are few studies that attempt to mediate between these starkly contrasting visions of the political effects of NGOs. One large exception is recent work by Brown,
Brown and Desposato (2002, 2005, and two forthcoming). They examine how external funds funneled through NGOs affect politics in Brazil. More specifically, they test the correlation between the funding of local NGOs by a World Bank supported project in the Brazilian state of Rondonia (Planafloro) and vote change in the presidential and gubernatorial elections (1994 and 1998) using municipal level data. Given that
Rondonia is considered a conservativecenter stronghold, they use change of vote shares for candidate on the left as a measure of political change. They find that increases of World Bank funding for NGOs through Planafloro decreased the left candidates’ vote shares at the gubernatorial level, but increased the left’s vote for the president. In other words, they find support that NGOs tend to help challengers in presidential voting and support that NGOs tend to help the status quo in gubernatorial voting.
In a later paper, Brown, Brown, and Desposato go one step further. Using the same research design, they test if the type of NGO matters to these contests. They code NGOs for their ideology, political mobilization, and populations served, and then include these new variables in their presidential vote share model (forthcoming). They find that the share of external World Bank funds given to NGOs whose target 27 populations were rubber tappers and indigenous peoples had a significant positive effect on the vote share of the leftist presidential candidate.
In contrast to the bulk of the literature on NGOs, which focuses on normative claims of the best role for NGOs in fostering development and democracy, tales of
“best practices” and rich description of local level projects, this project takes a different approach. The Brown, Brown and Desposato studies break new ground in the study of NGOs because they use a precisely defined variable for political change, a large sample, and a clear measure of NGO activity (World Bank financing). I seek to add to this style of work but I focus on measuring and testing the effects of NGOs on both patterns of participation, and patterns of voting, which I address using a countrywide dataset from Bolivia.
A New Approach
Instead of trying to directly answer the question of whether NGOs are good or bad for democracy, I focus on two outcomes that rest at the core of the political impact of NGOs in democracies, especially weakly democratic ones: 1) changes in patterns of political participation, and 2) changes in electoral support for the status quo.
With these two outcomes in mind, I propose a set of characteristics or variables that are most critical in determining the type of impact that NGOs will have in different settings. I argue that the political impact of NGOs is best explained by looking at three main groups of variables: 1) characteristics of the target population, 2) characteristics of the NGOs themselves, and 3) characteristics of the state. Variables at 28 all three of these levels help define the interactions between NGOs, their target populations, and the state.
Attention to these variables leads to several very interesting propositions about how NGOs affect politics in developing democracies. First, in terms of political participation, I argue that some NGOs do provide opportunities and resources for new organizing and mobilizing, which can boost political participation along the lines of the classic civil society arguments. This effect is strongest in very small communities and in communities that were extremely isolated and resourcepoor before the introduction of NGO activities. Additionally, certain types of NGOs – particularly those that focus on “capacity building” and participatory development – are more likely to boost participation than others.
However, an increase in participation in a setting of weak government and extreme dissatisfaction with government performance can lead to unexpected forms of participation, including protests, demonstrations and strikes, not just an increase in participation through standard institutional mechanisms such as voting.
The context of the local community is also important for determining the effect that NGOs tend to have on electoral support for political change. Specifically, the scale of the target community in question is a crucial factor for determining whether
NGOs tend to support political change, or tend to help maintain the status quo. In very small communities, the magnitude of the impact of new resources and opportunities for organizing is large. The chance that NGOs facilitate collective action in a way that would make a difference is greater, making it more likely that NGOs in these areas 29 will be a force for political change.
Essentially, understanding any generalities about how NGOs affect politics rests on a clear understanding of the community they are working in, the type of organization and its activities, and the larger political context. In the next section, I briefly detail the range in variation in these three arenas and their importance in determining the political effects of NGOs.
Identifying Key Variables
Table 2.1 Key Variables in the Analysis of the Political Effects of NGOs Target Communities NGOs The State
Size Level of Resources Policy Environment (degree of hostility to NGOs)
Level of Resources Type of Activities Regime Type (“political” vs. service provision)
Existing Civil Society Origin (national or Responsiveness of international) Government
State Capacity
Characteristics of the Target Population
NGOs work in a variety of different kinds of communities. Some work in large urban areas, some focus on rural development issues in the most remote communities, and some, trying to balance serving the largest number of people with serving the neediest people, focus on midsize towns with high concentrations of poverty. In thinking about how NGOs would likely influence politics in these different types of 30 communities, several characteristics stand out: 1) the size of the community, 2) the level of resources available, and 3) the degree of civil society organization prior to
NGO involvement.
First, the size of the jurisdiction matter